SUPPORT - July 16, 2009

In the ideology of the Enlightenment supporting the 18th Century idea of the Free Market, it was understood that obtaining labor at the cheapest possible rate was an aspect of economic efficiency. That view has been at odds with governmental support of certain essential aspects of the economy in the 20th Century, as exemplified by the program of farm support and others. In the 1930s, when the US government wanted to pump money into the rural areas, it often proved difficult to get farmers to accept the payments. Some viewed it as charity, which they were too proud to take. Of course, the same thinking did not apply to Dole, Campbell and Cargill. They were happy to take the cash and always had on hand distressed owners of small family farms to exhibit to the Congress while they stuffed the bulk of farm support into their own pockets. It was good for the nation to keep the farmers on the land and supply the fuel to support that part of the economy. In 1990, after the collapse of USSR, the Navy continued building Sea Wolf submarines whose only function was the destruction, if desired, of that country. But the overriding considerations were the wages in New London and the profits to the Electric Boat Co. The introduction of large numbers of immigrants, legal and otherwise, tends to expand the surplus of labor and act to drive down wages, in true Free Market fashion. Thus the answer to the unattractiveness of farm labor is met not by raising the wages of those workers but by introducing ever more impoverished people who would do any amount of work for any amount of money, thus preventing US workers from getting a wage commensurate with the toil that remained in field work. The same comment applies in other areas, where the effect of the many immigrants was to have them scab on each other, often being paid less than the minimum wage. This reality has been kept from the US public by the establishment press, while pretending a concern for their poverty.